A Valentine's Concerto
by Silver Augury
Summary: All Sakura knows-feels-thinks is him – SasukeSasukeSasuke and how he’s not there anymore –goneleftforever. Words and sentences and images all blur together as she screams and cries into her pillow." - A Valentine's story. 3 parts. Part 1 up now.


_A/N: Naruto doesn't belong to me. If it did, I wouldn't be writing fanfics. Happy reading._**  
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**Concerto**

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-x-x-x-

_Concerto: Work for one or more solo instruments accompanied by orchestra, often in three movements._

-x-x-x-

_**The first time he left, she broke down.**_

Dawn had barely touched the horizon when she woke and found the house deserted. The empty bed seemed to mock her with its perfectly folded sheets.

_Because of course, he'd always aimed for perfection in everything._

The crisp white sheets felt like ice against Sakura's trembling fingertips.

In spite of the frost-coated grass surrounding the house, Sakura ran outside, shivering in her old teddy bear pajamas. Her breath came in frantic puffs of white smoke as she ran through the training grounds, the academy, the forest… everywhere.

_Sasuke always was good at hiding._

When she finally returned home, hands and feet numb, she trudged through the empty mockery of a home –

_Because home was where your heart was_

- into what used to be their bedroom and crawled under the cold, cold blankets. She shivered, mind as numb as the fingers that gripped the blanket as if for dear life.

_Sasuke…_

She knew he was gone. She had almost expected it.

_It'd all been too good to be real._

Sakura buried her face in the pillow, muffling the choked, not-quite-human sounds that somehow escaped from her. Tremors wracked her body as ice – or perhaps fire – filled her veins. Desperately, she tried to cling to the quickly receding numbness, to no avail. It left behind an ugly, black emptiness that seemed to stretch on and on forever, threatening to overwhelm her. And when the tears came, they were neither graceful nor beautiful. They made her gasp for breath –

_She wished she'd stop breathing altogether_

- and choke on her own sobs. Sometimes when the sobs aren't enough, she screamed.

_At who? To who?_

The pillow muffled the screams, but they still seemed to echo endlessly within her mind. She clamped the pillow over her ears in a desperate attempt to just end it all.

He was all she knew – Sasuke, Sasuke, _Sasuke_ – and how he was gone now – gone-left-forever Words and sentences and images all blurred together as she screamed and cried into her pillow.

_Sasuke. Hers-together-always._

No longer.

_Three teens – children really – battered and bloody stumble through a forest. The dark haired one suddenly trips and pitches forward, when the pink haired girl catches his arm. Her hopeful smile dies under his withering glare._

_The same three teens sit in the hospital. They are no longer children, yet nor are they teens – because normal teenagers don't know how to kill a man in 173 different ways using only one finger do they? The pink haired girl bites her lip, drawing blood she doesn't notice as she furiously tries to heal the gaping hole in the other boy's stomach. It's the black haired one again of course, and he's paler than ever lying against those white – so white and oh-so-cold – sheets._

Like the very sheets Sakura lay on now.

_They all thought Sasuke was dying back then, but Sakura saved him didn't she?_

She trembled under the covers as more sobs escaped her.

Now who would save _her_?

-x-x-x-

When he finally came back, she ran into his arms. She buried her head in his chest and tried to ignore the painful squeezing of her heat, tried to push aside the anger, and tried not to remember that he'd been gone for almost a year. In return, he held her tightly – so very tightly – that she wondered if he wouldn't break a rib.

_She'd rather he broke each and every one of her ribs slowly and painfully, if only he'd never leave her again._

"I won't leave you again." He whispered to her. His voice shook._With what? _

She believed him. Because he's Sasuke, and she's Sakura, and they were together now. And to her, that's all that mattered.

That night, when Sakura woke up screaming from the nightmares that haunted her

_- Sasuke, walking through the gates of Konoha without a backwards glance; Sasuke, dancing in the arms of beautiful blond women; Sasuke, injured, bleeding, dying; __**Sasuke**_

- he was there to make it all better again. He held her and smoothed her hair, whispering promises and apologies and more promises in a choked voice. She curled up against him, and the nightmares receded.

Sasuke looked down at the bundle of pink beside him and vowed to himself never to leave again, never to hurt Sakura again.

Yet Sakura couldn't help but feel the nightmares were just waiting, biding their time. Waiting… for the chance to come back.

_No._ Sasuke-kun would never leave again, she reminded herself. _He promised._

And so Sakura fell asleep with this thought, a smile on her lips.

-x-x-x-

_**Less than a month later, he was gone again.**_

When Sakura woke up to an empty bed again, the pang hit her chest with a sickening familiarity and she cried softly to herself. A bitter kind of grief swept over her as she remembered his words.

"_I won't leave you again."_

She bowed her head as the tears fell. _"Why are you doing this Sasuke-kun?"_

The only response she received was the gentle pitter-pattering of the rain against her window.

"_Don't you just love the rain Sasuke-kun?" A pink haired girl calls to the black haired youth behind her. She twirls among the raindrops, scattering the water in her hair in a graceful circle._

_He simply looks at her wordlessly._

_She laughs and pulls him out from under the tree he's hiding under._

"_Dance with me." _

_Her laughter carries over the field as she spins around him, a startling splash of pink and emerald against the bleak grey landscape. As he watches her – his flower – dance, he can't help the tiny smile that graces his lips. _

'_I love the rain too' he whispers. And even more quietly, 'But never as much as I love you.'_

But now even that splash of colour has faded to grey, and she cried along with the heavens. She cried because she knew that no matter how much she loved him, her love could only ever be a star to the shining brilliance of the power he so craved.

The rain continued to fall.

When he returned years later, he found her in the crowd of awestruck people and ran to her. He held her and refused to let her go. He apologized again and again, his dark eyes searching hers anxiously, promising never to leave. Never, ever, again, he said to her in an anguished kind of whisper. He kissed her so passionately, so desperate to believe his own words. And so she nodded and returned the kisses.

_She pretended it was alright, that everything was okay. Because that was the only thing left to do, and she knew Sasuke needed it. But she wouldn't – never, ever, again (and there is a bitter kind of irony in the way she mimics his words) – believe him. Because she knew. _

Had always known, but only then would she admit the cold, biting truth. Sasuke -

_Sasuke-kun, echoes a younger Sakura_

- would never be hers and all her dreams-hopes-wishes could only ever remain (shattered) dreams-hopes-wishes because he was an avenger, and she knew he would never stop. For anyone; anything.

-x-x-x-

_**Sure enough, barely a year later, Sasuke leaves Konoha again.**_

_**But this time, only his body returns.**_


End file.
